Florida A Leading State In Job Growth

June 8, 1985|By Peter Francese, Cowles Syndicate

The most obvious way to earn money is by holding down a job -- and some states are better than others when it comes to job availability.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, 14.3 million more people had jobs in 1983 than in 1973 -- a respectable 15 percent increase. But nearly half of that increase (46 percent) occurred in four states -- California, Texas, Florida and Colorado.

While California and Texas gained more than 2 million jobs each, two other states actually had fewer employed people in 1983 than 10 years earlier. Ohio lost 40,000 workers and Michigan lost 67,000 workers, a 2 percent shrinkage.

Two small states had the highest percentage increase from 1973 to 1983. The number of workers in Alaska jumped 69 percent, and those in Nevada grew 60 percent. So there was more than a 70 percent spread between Alaska, the fastest growth state, and Michigan, the slowest.

Is this tremendously wide variation in job creation going to continue? Not according to the latest bureau projections. They analyzed the future of 57 separate industries for each of the 50 states. Their projections of total employment are the sum of the forecasted changes in each industry.

The bureau economists predict that from 1983 to 1990 total U.S. employment will grow another 15 percent, a somewhat quicker pace than the preceding 10 years. The extra 16 million jobs is good news indeed for our long-term economic outlook.

The bureau also predicts that the fastest growth state in terms of employment will be Arizona, up 32 percent, and the slowest will be Alabama, at 9 percent.

The bureau further predicts a great rebound for Michigan and Ohio. Each of those states is expected to add over half a million jobs by the end of this decade.

Among the top six fastest-growing states are Nevada (second) and Alaska (fourth), but the list also includes third-ranked Florida and fifth-ranked Colorado.

Despite the continued high employment growth in Florida, Colorado, Texas and California, those states are expected to account for less than one-third (31 percent) of the jobs created between now and the end of the decade.

Among the six slowest-growing states are Illinois, Delaware, Maine, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Alabama, but even these are expected to show an increase in employment of around 10 percent by 1990.